Nats mugged over police staff crisis
Cop leader uses conference to warn cash cuts will have ‘dire consequences’ for law and order
THE leaders of the SNP were yesterday accused – at their own party conference – of hampering the fight against crime by slashing the number of police to a 20-year low.
Hundreds of party members who gathered in Aberdeen for its first in-person conference for three years heard speeches from
SNP leaders attacking the Tories at Westminster and promising yet again to deliver independence.
But one of the country’s most influential police officers used a conference debate to issue a stark warning that the SNP Government was presiding over disastrous cuts to Scotland’s police force. The head of Scotland’s main police union, which represents rank-and-file officers, claimed police numbers are about to drop to levels not seen since 2003.
Scottish Police Federation general secretary Calum Steele said cuts to the force will have ‘dire’ consequences for law and order. He said the force is already overstretched and a predicted fall in numbers will see just 15,500 officers serving within the next five years.
This represents a shocking fall from the 17,400 members of the force who were employed before the pandemic.
In a striking intervention on the opening day of the conference, Mr Steele said: ‘There is much more demand placed upon the police than it has the capacity to service now. We are in a dire financial situation at the moment.
‘For the police service, the consequences of that will be a smaller police force, fewer police officers, fewer police stations, more crime and more victims of crime being disgruntled with the police.’
Mr Steele shared a stage with Keith Brown, the Scottish Justice Secretary, where the two disagreed over the future of policing in Scotland.
Mr Steele added: ‘The thing we have to remember is at this time the police service is already overstretched.
‘As we move into austerity, which will impact every single part of the public sector with the exception of health, it would appear, there is an inevitability that all these other services, whether it is mental health services or council services, will end up dumping work on the police service.
‘They will not do that because they want to – they will do that because they have to. A smaller and diminished police service will not be able to come close to servicing that demand and the inevitable consequence will be a loss of confidence in the police, which will in itself translate into a loss of confidence in government.’
Before the pandemic, there were 17,400 officers in Scotland but this had fallen to 16,610 in June. Due to budget cuts made in the Scottish Government’s spending review in May, this figure, Mr Steele claimed, is set to fall to 15,500 in the next five years.
Responding to his claim, Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Jamie Greene said: ‘This is a chilling warning straight to the heart of the SNP Government about the impact their realterms cut to the resource budget will have on policing in Scotland.
‘The SNP must U-turn on their broken promise and give Police Scotland the budget they need to protect the public.’
Mr Brown told the conference: ‘There’s an awful lot being done, there are big, big challenges being done, but there’s no vendetta against any part of the justice system – why would we want to do that? The way to overcome these structural limitations, mostly based on finance, are by achieving independence for Scotland.’
The police were not the only vital public service to raise their frustrations with the SNP at the conference. Colin Poolman, director of the Royal College of Nursing in Scotland, said he anticipated strike action by the end of the year unless his members received a better pay offer from the Scottish Government.
Nurses rejected an offer of 5 per cent earlier this year. With inflation at 10 per cent, Mr Poolman wants his members to get an offer 5 per cent above inflation – 15 per cent. He said: ‘It is
about time the Scottish Government acted properly and recognised nurses have had year-on-year wage cuts for about ten years and they need to do something.
‘They have said they will come with a significant improvement this week, but I am not confident it will be as significant as we think it should be.’
Meanwhile, Health Secretary Humza Yousaf came under fire for a response he gave to a nurse protesting outside the conference.
The nurse was talking about conditions and morale in hospitals and asked if he knew the difference between hearing and listening. In his response uploaded onto Twitter, Mr Yousaf can be heard saying to the nurse: ‘I know that. Come on, let’s not patronise each other, I definitely know that.’
Last night, Jackie Baillie, Labour’s health spokesman, said: ‘Humza Yousaf is breaking all the records for incompetence in a Government that has had its fair share of poor ministers. To talk to front-line nurses like this is shameful.
‘Make no mistake, it is the failures of this SNP Government that have forced nurses to consider industrial action. Nicola Sturgeon must put Mr Yousaf in special measures now.’